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When the State Knows a Life Is at Risk

Writer: Charley Bickers
Charley Bickers
3 days ago
8 min read

The right to life isn't only a ban on killing. When the authorities know a life is in danger, it obliges them to act.

Edition 2, first published 19 October 2026.

Yesterday I asked a question on X: is it time we held judges accountable for manslaughter?

It was meant to provoke. It was also meant seriously. This edition sets out the law behind it, starting with the right every other right depends on.

Someone tells the police they’re afraid for their life. They give names. They describe threats. Then nothing happens.

Is that just a bad decision? Or is it a breach of a human right?

Sometimes, it’s a breach. That is what Article 2 is for.

What the right says

Article 2(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights opens:

“Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law.”

Article 2(2) then sets out the only situations in which force that ends a life is not a breach, and only where it is “no more than absolutely necessary”: defending someone from unlawful violence, making a lawful arrest or preventing escape, and lawfully quelling a riot.

The rest of Article 2(1) refers to the death penalty. In the UK that’s a dead letter: the Human Rights Act also gives effect to Protocol 13, which abolishes the death penalty in all circumstances.

What it means in plain English

Article 2 puts three duties on the state.

Don’t take life unlawfully. Police and soldiers may use lethal force only when absolutely necessary. In McCann v United Kingdom (1995), the Grand Chamber found a breach because of how an operation was planned and controlled, not just how the trigger was pulled.

Protect life. The state must have effective laws against violence, and in some cases must take practical steps to protect a person in danger.

Investigate. When someone dies and the state may bear responsibility, there must be an effective, independent investigation. In England and Wales this is often an “Article 2 inquest”, which asks not only how someone died but in what circumstances (R (Middleton) v West Somerset Coroner [2004] UKHL 10).

When must the authorities act?

The key test comes from Osman v United Kingdom (1998). The duty to take preventive action arises where the authorities “knew or ought to have known at the time of the existence of a real and immediate risk to the life of an identified individual” from someone else’s criminal acts, and failed to take reasonable measures within their powers that might have been expected to avoid it.

It’s a high bar. In Osman itself the Court found no breach of Article 2. But the test has teeth.

In Kontrová v Slovakia (2007), a mother reported her husband’s violence and, later, his threats involving a shotgun. The police failed to register her complaint properly or act on it. He then shot their two children. The Court found that Slovakia had breached Article 2.

In Kurt v Austria (2021), the Grand Chamber spelled out what domestic abuse cases demand: an immediate response, and an “autonomous, proactive and comprehensive” risk assessment. If that assessment shows a real and immediate risk to life, the authorities must take measures that are “adequate and proportionate” to it.

The UK Supreme Court applied the same principles in Michael v Chief Constable of South Wales Police [2015] UKSC 2. A woman made an emergency call that was given the wrong priority, and she was killed before officers arrived. The Court held that her family’s Article 2 claim should go to trial.

How it applies in the Family Court

Article 2 is rarely argued directly in a Family Court. But its logic runs through the rules on domestic abuse.

Practice Direction 12J requires the court, where domestic abuse is admitted or proven, to ensure that any child arrangements order “protects the safety and wellbeing of the child and the parent with whom the child is living, and does not expose either of them to the risk of further harm”. Before facts are decided, an interim order should not expose the child or the other parent to an “unmanageable risk of harm”.

The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 also recognises children who see, hear or experience the effects of abuse as victims in their own right (section 3).

Getting risk right matters both ways. Missing real danger can cost a life. Replacing evidence with assumptions fails children too. That’s why the “comprehensive” in Kurt matters.

When the court is the state: the question I asked yesterday

A family court is a public authority too. Its judges decide whether a child sees a parent, how often, and how long a parent waits for an answer. Those decisions change lives, and the cost of getting them wrong is counted in more than lost years.

The numbers are not in dispute. Suicide remains “the leading cause of death of men under 50”, in the government’s own words (Men’s Health Strategy for England, 2025). In 2025, 4,620 men died by suicide in England and Wales. Add the latest figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland and it comes to nearly 15 men a day across the UK. Men die by suicide at roughly three times the rate of women (ONS).

Public Health Wales tracks every suspected suicide in Wales. In Wales, family or relationship problems were a factor in 1 in 4 male suicides (Public Health Wales, 2022–25). Across the UK, that would mean more than three men every single day. It doesn’t tell us how many had been through the family courts, because nobody counts that. As Swansea University researchers put it in 2025, there is “no national system to track or categorise paternal suicide, unlike maternal mortality”.

Does Article 2 reach this? The duty to protect life isn’t limited to threats from other people. In Rabone v Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust [2012] UKSC 2, the Supreme Court held that an NHS trust owed an Article 2 duty to a young voluntary patient it knew was at real risk of taking her own life. A “real” risk, Lord Dyson said, is “a substantial or significant risk and not a remote or fanciful one”. The trust’s own expert put the risk at around 5% on the day she left hospital, and that was enough.

No court has yet applied that duty to a family judge making a contact order. Rabone turned on the state having taken responsibility for a vulnerable person whose risk it knew about. But the logic of Article 2 is plain: when the state knows its decision puts a life at real risk, it can’t simply look away. Family courts hear evidence of fathers’ despair every day. Is it ever treated as a warning?

So I’ll ask the question again.

When a no-contact order is later found to be wrong, unreasonable or a breach of a father’s human rights, and that father has taken his own life, should judicial immunity still protect the judge who made it?

Is it time we held judges accountable for manslaughter?

Be clear about what the law says today. It says no. Judges can’t be sued for their judicial decisions (Sirros v Moore, 1975). Section 9(3) of the Human Rights Act bars damages for a judicial act done in good faith, except to compensate unlawful detention. Gross negligence manslaughter needs a death caused by a grossly negligent breach of a duty of care (R v Adomako, 1995). And the law generally treats an adult’s free, deliberate act as breaking the chain of causation (R v Kennedy (No 2) [2007] UKHL 38). A suicide is treated as the person’s own act.

There are good reasons why judges must be free to decide hard cases without fear. But if the answer to my question is no, the safeguards have to be far stronger than they are:

  • hearings in weeks, not years;

  • contact orders that are enforced, not just made;

  • evidence of a risk to any parent’s life treated as seriously as any other risk to life;

  • an outside review at what went wrong whenever an order is overturned; and

  • national data on what happens to parents after the court door closes.

Accountability isn’t revenge. It’s how a system learns. A system that can’t be questioned can’t improve.

Why it matters for equality, children and policing

“Everyone’s right to life” has no exceptions by sex.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2025 (people aged 16 and over). The legal definition in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is neutral as to sex. So is Article 2.

A risk assessment that is genuinely proactive and comprehensive can’t start from a guess about who the victim is likely to be. It has to start from the facts: what was said, what was threatened, what has happened before.

For police forces, councils and children’s services, all public authorities under section 6 of the Human Rights Act, this isn’t optional. It’s the law.

What you can do

  • Be specific when you report risk. Dates, words used, threats, previous incidents. Put it in writing where you can, and keep any reference numbers.

  • Ask what was done. You’re entitled to ask whether a risk assessment was carried out, and what action followed.

  • Raise safety early in family proceedings, so the court can apply Practice Direction 12J from the first hearing. Take legal advice if you can.

  • Ask your MP two questions. How are police, Cafcass and the courts making sure risk to life is assessed on the evidence, for every victim, whatever their sex? And why is no one counting what happens to parents after family proceedings end?

This series is general information, not legal advice.

Sources

Charley Bickers, Founder of UN For Men - The United Global Alliance For Men & Boys

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